The theme of this pastoral epistle written by the apostle Paul to his son in the faith and his beloved co-worker Titus is the healthy Christian life. A number of times he uses a term translated in the King James Version as sound. He talks of sound doctrine and sound living. That word sound is healthy, hygienic in the original language. Titus is commanded by the apostle to establish leadership, healthy leadership, in the churches on the island of Crete.
The leadership is responsible then to expose the false teachers and to fight against false doctrine by proclaiming the truth. Those who are false teachers profess that they know God, but their lives don't back up their profession. It's an empty confession they have. He says, Titus, that is not to be among God's true people. Our living should back up our believing. How we behave should underscore what we believe.
So he says as he begins chapter 2, speak thou the things which become or befit sound doctrine. He says then in verse 10, that they the believers may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. That word adorn is the root word for our word cosmetics. Rather than covering up, what it means is to make attractive. It means to make something beautiful, cosmeo. You and I, by the way that we live, are to adorn our theology.
What we say we believe is to be made beautiful and attractive to people because of the way that we live our lives day by day. It's not enough just to tell somebody that Jesus loves them, that he died for their sins, and they rose again. It's not enough just to hand them a force, spiritual laws, or some other tract. But our lives must back up what we say we believe about the Lord. Then in verse 11 we come to our text for tonight.
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a people of his own, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority.
Let no man despise thee. Of course, whenever we come to the word of God, we must realize the authority that the word has in our lives or that it should have. We come to this book as if it were no other book of instruction in the world. This is God's word to us, and what we see in these pages and read in these words we are to accept as the very words of God. In the text that we've read tonight, we have the second of three doctrinal sections in the book of Titus.
The first one is back in verses 1 and 2, and then we come to this one. Notice that the theme of this text is the grace of God. Why should I live the kind of life that God commands of me in verses 1 through 10 of chapter 2? And remember the instructions that he gave. He spoke first to the aged men and then to the aged women. He doesn't define what age it is. He's smart. He speaks then to the young women. He speaks to the young men.
He speaks to the servants, to the slaves, which applies to students and to children and to those of us who are employees. What he says applies to all of us. Verses 9 and 10. Why should I be motivated to live that way? That is a high standard of living that the word of God commands of me. Well, there are four reasons given to us in the verses that we've read for our text tonight as to why I should live the kind of life that God commands of me.
Reason number one is because of what grace has done for me. Verse 11. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Grace is God's unmerited favor toward me. It is kindness that He shows toward me, though I don't deserve it. It is His grace which allows His love to reach out and to save me. His grace is based upon, is rooted in the work of Jesus Christ when He died and rose again for my sins. Because of Christ's work, God can be gracious to me.
That's what he is saying here, that God's grace has appeared just as the dawn of the sun after a dark night. So God's grace has appeared on the horizon of history. Ever since man fell into sin, there was darkness in the world brought about by man's fall. That darkness was overwhelming. It lasted for thousands of years. But then one day, 2,000 years ago, God's grace appeared like the sun after a dark night. That grace appeared in the person of Jesus Christ.
In John 1 verse 14, it says that Jesus Christ is the Word, He became incarnate, and He was full of grace and truth. When it is mentioned that God's grace appeared, it refers not only to Christ's birth, but to His life, to His death, to His resurrection. In other words, the totality of His life is in view here. God manifested His grace through Jesus Christ. Notice how he describes God's grace. He calls it the saving grace of God, the grace of God that brings salvation.
Someone has said, grace came to rescue man from the greatest possible evil, namely the curse of God upon sin, and to bestow upon him the greatest possible boon, namely the blessing of God for soul and body throughout all eternity. The reason that God's grace appeared was that we might be saved. God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. You notice those three words, to all men.
The King James puts that phrase after appeared, and it seems as though he is saying that the grace of God has appeared to all men. Actually, those words are modifying saving grace. In other words, God's grace has appeared that brings salvation to all men. Not all men have seen it yet. All men have received this saving message of the gospel, and that is why we are so heavily involved in missions and believe so strongly in evangelism in the world and here locally.
But God's grace that brings salvation has rendered all men saveable. It doesn't say here that all men will ultimately be saved. That's not the meaning of it. But God by His grace has caused all men to be in a position of being saved. They can be saved if they will believe the gospel and trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Most of us here tonight have come to that place in our lives when we have trusted the Lord. As a result of that, God's grace has done a work in us.
Because of what grace has done for us, we want to live the kind of life that pleases our Lord. As Ralph Hudson wrote, I'll live for him who died for me. How happy then my life shall be. I'll live for him who died for me, my Savior and my God. Then there's a second reason as to why I should live the kind of life that God commands of me earlier in this chapter. That is because of what grace is teaching me.
Verse 12. God's grace has not only appeared and saved me, but His grace is now instructing me. The word instruct here means to train or to bring up a child. It refers to instruction plus discipline when it's necessary. As you know, you have to discipline children. It's a part of being a parent. It's one of the hard things about being a parent. Learning how to discipline with the right spirit and with the right balance and being consistent. Consistency is a virtue of the gods, someone has said.
We parents must strive to have consistency in our discipline. Well, God with perfect consistency, disciplines, instructs us. It's a school that we're in. God wants us not only to have the right creed, but to have the right character as well. Grace is working in me to teach me to live well pleasing to the Lord. Now there are negative and positive sides to this. Just about everything has a negative and positive. For example, electricity.
Just as there are many negatives and positives that must work together, so is true in the Christian life. The negatives are found here in the words that God's grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. The positive is found when it says we should live soberly, righteously, and godly. Now let's think about the negative for a moment. In the Christian life there are some things I must renounce. There are some things I must deny.
I must do it once and for all and then follow that with a daily confirmation of daily death. I wish it were possible for us to once and for all put our sin natures in the grave and keep them there and never have to think about it again and never be challenged by the sin nature, but it's not that way. By faith we make that decision to renounce, and yet every day don't we face the battle. We have to reconfirm that decision to renounce and to deny some things in our lives.
The apostle mentions two things here. First ungodliness. What is ungodliness? Well, it's the opposite of godliness. Godliness is godlikeness. It's having the Lord in the center of our lives ruling as the sovereign one. It's the Lord on the throne of our lives directing the issues of the life. That's godliness. Ungodliness is just the opposite. We have today what is called the uncola. What is the uncola? It's a soft drink that doesn't have cola in it. So what is an ungodly life?
It's a life that is not God-centered. Is it possible for a Christian to live an ungodly life? Yes. Else, the apostle wouldn't have told us here that we must deny it. It's possible for us to go on day after day after day and never give Jesus Christ the place he deserves in our lives. That's ungodliness. And there are many believers who are living ungodly lives. We ought not to live that way. We must deny the tendency to neglect Jesus Christ and to live the day ignoring him.
Have you ever come to the end of the day and realized as you put your head down on the pillow that you went through a whole day without being as conscious of the presence of Christ as you ought to be? If you've never faced a day like that, then you're a strange person. You're an aberration. All of us face that. And therefore we need to deny that natural tendency to go through the day as an ungodly person.
Start the day with the Lord and throughout the day remind ourselves of his presence with us. We've heard in a book some time ago now, we must practice the presence of God. Then he says that we must also deny worldly lusts. What does that refer to? Well, the world. The world is this present system of things in which we live. It's this organization of mankind which is opposed to God. It's a spiritual thing. It's very, very real. The world system is headed up by Satan himself.
The world way of thinking and the world motivations and the world goals, all of these things are based upon satanic principles of greed and force and the desire for pleasure and to leave God out. You and I live in the world, but we're not to be of it. We are to deny the very tendency in our natures to be worldly. If there's any word that Satan has twisted and taken out of context and made nearly meaningless to us these days, it's the term worldliness.
When I use that term immediately, 95 percent of the Christians in this room think of drinking and dancing and card playing, etc., isn't that right? Because we have defined in the past worldliness as doing those things. I want to tell you tonight that is not worldliness only. I'm not denying those things may be worldly, but worldliness is much broader than that. Worldliness is simply denying God his rightful place in my life. That's being like the world.
Worldliness is living for the same things that the unsafe people live for, being motivated by the same things that motivate them, thinking the same way they think. That is worldliness, and all of us are susceptible to it. There are many people who don't participate in the Big Five, but who are as worldly as any unsafe person because of their attitude toward life. We are to deny those things in us which are a part of the world system, the possessions, the desire to have things.
Our world is motivated by the desire to have things or to experience pleasure. That's one of the reasons for the big drug scene, the escapism of it, getting away from reality, being able to have some kind of sensual pleasure or mental pleasure. I think even a spiritual kind of release involves even the spirit of a person, this drug thing. It is not godly, but it involves a release. We are to deny this kind of thing, the desire for pleasure. It doesn't mean we can't have fun.
There are some people who think that God waits up in the morning for us and as soon as we have a good time, he's got a club there and says, now don't you have a good time today? Don't you enjoy life? Some Christians look like they were weaned on pickle juice. God doesn't want us to have a good time. God wants us to enjoy. Listen, he's given us all things richly to enjoy.
There is nobody that deserves to have more fun living than Christians because our Father is in control of this planet we live on. He made it all. It all belongs to him. He's given us everything richly to enjoy. When it comes to the kind of pleasure that the world seeks, we are to deny that. Then the world seeks power. That's one of the lusts of the world. Men build their little kingdoms and they secure themselves within a certain framework so that they have power.
I've seen people leave churches because they lose their power base in the church. They build themselves a little kingdom and suddenly their kingdom is threatened. So they get out. They don't want anything to do with it. I've seen pastors that way who build themselves little kingdoms that they live in. That's worldliness. We are to deny that kind of thing. The only kingdom we are to seek is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in our lives and ultimately established in this world.
Deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. Very practical. But then he puts it on a positive note. He says that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly. Grace teaches me how to live to please the Lord. It involves three characteristics here. To live soberly. That doesn't mean to live undrunk. That's not the meaning of the word. It means that we are to live with discretion. To live a well-balanced life.
If there's any word that's important these days in our lives, in our churches, in our ministries, it's that word balance. It's so easy to go in one extreme or the other to follow tangents. Be balanced. That's the word. Live soberly. A balanced life that shows stability and a common sense. A spiritual common sense. That's a word that relates primarily to myself. Inwardly, I am to be that way. Stable, mature, well-balanced. And then he says we're to live righteously.
That's a word that relates to my relationship with others. It means to live a life that's free from deception. To be just and fair in my dealings and faithful to my promises. To follow through in what I give my word to do. That's righteousness in the daily life. So I am to live inwardly by this word soberness. I'm to be sober, well-balanced. In my relationship with people, I am to be righteous. And then in my relationship with God, I am to be godly. It means to live a life that's devoted to him.
To have a life that's characterized by proper reverence for him. To be conscious of his presence and to desire the fulfillment of his will in my life above everything else. As Phil was saying this morning, submission to the will of God. That's godliness. And so he gives a very well-balanced picture here of the Christian life. Inwardly, I am to live soberly. Toward you, I am to live righteously. And toward God, I am to live godly. Now grace teaches me to live that way. Where?
Right here and now it says. In this present age. Sometimes I hear people complain about the fact that it's so hard to live the Christian life right now. It's always been hard to live the Christian life. And really it's no harder now than it ever has been. The same forces are at work. Basically the same problems are here. It may be a little bit more intense because we're in the end times. But it's always been tough to be a Christian.
Right now in this present age, that's the kind of a life I am to live. Because of what grace is teaching me, I want to live a life pleasing to the Lord. And then there's a third reason that I want to live the kind of life he commands in this chapter and that is because of whom grace will bring again. The faith that you and I have embraced is basically a future-oriented faith. Oh yes, it is based upon historical facts.
The Bible teaches us those, it presents them to us, but the Bible also tells us to be looking ahead. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. It is not just in this life, but our faith looks forward to some glorious things. He says that we are looking for that blessed hope. To look for it means to wait for it, to wait with anticipation. To expect it with joy. We have some friends who are visiting us this weekend, the Waltons from Kentucky.
You'll know them, they're the ones without shoes here in the church tonight. No, I'm kidding of course. We anticipated their coming and yesterday as we were expecting their arrival from that long trip from northern Kentucky, it seemed like our whole lives were wrapped around that event. The kids kept running to the door, when are they coming? We were looking forward to seeing them. You know what that's like. Our whole day was wrapped around that one event.
It was all focused on the Waltons coming, when they were going to get there. That's the way he tells us that we ought to be living our lives every day. We ought to be wrapped around this truth, Jesus Christ could come today, and he is coming soon. My life is to be focused on that truth. Everything I do should be centered on that. I should be expecting him with joy, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
When Jesus came the first time, his glory was veiled in flesh. Only a few saw it. The few who saw his miracles and Peter, James, and John who saw his glory burst through his skin at the transfiguration. He appeared as the brightness of the sun, it says. His glory was manifested. When he would do his miracles, there would be a burst of glory that would be seen. Not visible, but his power and his deity could be seen by what he did.
Do you know when Jesus comes the next time, there's not going to be any veiling of his glory. He will shine as the brightness of the sun. That brightness will radiate throughout all of the universe. It will be seen. It is the glorious, visible manifestation of Jesus Christ. He will return in that blaze of glory and call us out. Why is it called a blessed hope? Because it's a happy thing to contemplate, isn't it?
Leaving behind this world with its sin and its trouble, leaving behind this world and its darkness and its lawlessness, leaving behind its taxes, leaving behind everything that's a part of this life that aggravates, that holds us down, that fights against us, leaving it all, and being caught up to be with him. That of course is the happiest part of it. The fact that we will be with him. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory, it says.
In 1 John 3, it says, when he shall appear, we shall be like him. So we'll not only be with him, but we will be like him. When he comes, we will share with him in his glory, and we will reign with him as joint heirs of God's inheritance. That's why it's called a blessed hope. Then it's a blessed hope because when we see Jesus, we're also going to get to see some dear friends and loved ones who have gone on in Christ.
I like what it says there in 1 Thessalonians 4, where it says, then shall we, those who have died in Christ and those who are living in that day, then shall we be caught up in the air to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we, all of us, be with the Lord forever. That's blessedness. There are not many of us tonight who cannot look forward to seeing some loved one who has meant a great deal to us. So tonight we look forward to that blessed hope and his appearing in glory.
Because of whom grace is going to bring again, I want to live right now pleasing to him. When he comes, I don't want to have to be ashamed of the way that I've lived. As the songwriter said, oft times the days seem long and the burdens hard to bear. We're tempted to complain, to murmur, and despair, but Christ will soon appear to catch his bride away. All tears forever over in God's eternal day. It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. And it will, won't it?
It will be worth the trials and the struggle and the heartache and the fighting and the joy. It will be worth it all when we see him. Now, there's a fourth and final reason in our text tonight as to why you and I should live the kind of life that God has commanded of us. It is because of what grace has purposed. God's grace has saved me. God's grace is teaching me. God's grace is bringing Jesus back, and I'm going to see him and be with him. And God's grace has purposed something for me.
And when I understand what that purpose is, I want to live pleasing to Christ. It's a two-fold purpose, really. It says that this Savior who's coming once gave himself. It is the work of the cross. He gave himself for us that he might, number one, redeem us, and number two, purify us. That's the purpose that grace has in mind. First to redeem us, to purchase us out of slavery. You and I are enslaved by our first birth in sin. We are enslaved to disobedience and to rebellion against God.
But God has paid the price for me. Christ has given himself for me to redeem me out of that and to set me free so that now I can serve him. I had to be rescued by somebody more powerful than myself. And that's what Jesus did for me and for you if you've trusted Christ. He has redeemed us. All my iniquities on him were laid. He nailed them all to the tree. Jesus, the debt of my sin, fully paid. He paid the ransom for me. Then he has purposed to purify us as well.
The word means to cleanse, to make free from any mixture of sin. Sin makes us dirty. And the Lord has purposed that someday I'm going to stand in his presence clean without one spot or blemish. See the suit I have on? See that spot right there? Isn't that ugly? The first time I wore this suit, isn't that the same story you've told and heard? The first time I wore this suit I had a pen in that pocket. I took it on an airplane.
And something about the difference in pressure caused that India ink to leak in that suit and fortunately it was right under my pocket. So you can't see it, but it's there. Do you know something? When you and I stand before Jesus Christ, there aren't going to be spots to be seen on the outside or the inside. We're going to be cleansed inside and out. Perfectly pure. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for us as Ephesians 5 that he might sanctify and cleanse us.
The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Are you made clean? I hope so. Or only as we are made clean are we then made fit to be his peculiar people, as it says in the Old English. There are some of God's people who take that very literally. They're kind of peculiar. But actually that word peculiar has a peculiar meaning. And that is a people of his own. If you're going to illustrate this on a blackboard, you would put a dot there and then draw a circle around it.
That would illustrate this word. That dot would represent you and me, and the circle around it would represent God's arms of love. It means that he puts his arms around us. We are his special possession. Your child runs up to you and you hug your child. You put your arms around him. In a very special way, he's your possession. That's what God is saying here, that we are a people of his own. He loves us desperately and dearly. He is making us fit to be that special treasure of his.
He tells us that we should be characterized by being zealous of good works. Obviously, good works do not save us, but good works should flow from our lives, shouldn't they? God has saved us so that we might be known for good works. For whom can you do some good work this week?
Can you think of something you can do for your wife, your husband, that fellow that sits across the desk from you there in the office, that person who works beside you in that assembly line, the students that are in your classroom? Maybe you can forget the quiz this week. What good work can you do for somebody this week that would glorify Jesus Christ? Let's make it even a little tougher than that. For whom can you do a good work when that person doesn't really deserve it?
Nah, somebody comes to your mind immediately. That guy you've been playing to get back. This week, bless instead of curse. Perform a good work rather than take out revenge. You see, God has redeemed us and purified us that we might be his people characterized by good works. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of what? Works lest any man should boast.
Then it goes on to say, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained we should walk in them. We are not saved by good works, but having been saved, we should be characterized by them. When it says that we are his workmanship, the word there is the Greek word poema. You see an English word there? Poem. We are his poem.
You know the word is only used one at a time in the New Testament, and that's in Romans chapter 1, where Paul speaks of the heavens as manifesting God's power and his Godhead. He uses that word in that verse. In other words, the heavens are a poem that speak to all of the world in a universal language of God's greatness and his deity and his power. Every star up there is a stanza of a poem. What Ephesians 2 is saying is that we also are poems.
The Holy Spirit is writing a stanza every day in our lives, and every stanza is to be characterized by good works which glorify God. We too are his poems by which God manifests himself to a lost world. How are you doing on good works? What motivates you to live? Why are you doing what you are doing? It's good for us to stop and ask that question occasionally. Are we doing it just to please our folks? Well, that's an important motive, but it's not the most supreme motive.
I should want to please my folks because it honors God that I do that. Are you doing what you are doing because you get paid for doing it, and if you didn't do it, you wouldn't get paid? That's a very practical reason, but there's a greater reason for doing it. I want to do what I am doing because it honors God that I do this in such a way that men can look at this and know that I am a believer. Why do you do what you do? Why should I live the kind of life God has commanded of me?
Because I love him. Yesterday I was down on my knees, not praying. I was doing the kitchen floor. Do you husbands know what that's like? You've got some soap out there, a rag, taking a few square feet at a time, and washing that floor. My son came up to me and asked me a very interesting question. He said, Daddy, why are you doing this? I said, because if I don't, Mother will beat me. No, I didn't say that. I may get beaten now, but that's not what I said. You know what I said?
I said, because I love Mommy. That's why I'm doing it. I want to help her. If you love somebody, you want to help them. My friend, if you love Jesus, you'll want to live the kind of life that pleases Him. Let's pray.